Cassie McFarland

Most coin designers spend years inside the U.S. Mint. Cassie McFarland was a working graphic artist in San Luis Obispo, California, who entered a public contest — and beat everyone.

In 2013 the Mint ran an open competition for the face of the 2014 National Baseball Hall of Fame coins. It drew 178 entries. McFarland submitted hers on the final day. "I don't know why, but for some reason even though I only had one day to finish, I was very motivated to get it done," she later said.

Her entry was a single image: an open, well-worn baseball glove. She titled it A Hand Full of Gold. The Treasury picked it from sixteen finalists, with a judging panel that included Hall of Fame players Joe Morgan, Brooks Robinson, Ozzie Smith, Don Sutton, and Dave Winfield. She was paid $5,000, and her initials were placed on the coin.

Born in 1985, McFarland earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art and Design from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo in 2008. She is, by training and trade, a graphic artist and painter — not a career engraver. The Baseball Hall of Fame coins are her one famous foray into money.

The glove was a deliberate choice, not an obvious one. McFarland wanted an image anyone could read in an instant. "I chose a child's glove, an eight to ten-year-old child's glove. I wanted the design to be immediately accessible," she said. Having played softball as a girl gave her, in her words, "a real feel for the tactile quality of the design."

She designed for the coin's unusual shape on purpose. The 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame coins were the first the Mint ever struck curved — the heads side (the obverse) dished inward like a bowl, the tails side (the reverse) bulging out like a ball. McFarland's glove sits in that concave cup, so the coin doesn't just picture a glove — it is the pocket of one, waiting to catch.

A coin contest produces a drawing, not a finished die. Turning her image into struck metal fell to Mint sculptor-engraver Don Everhart, who modeled the obverse for production and designed the convex reverse — a baseball — that Congress had specified. McFarland credited him plainly: "Mint engraver Don Everhart did a great job articulating the core message of my design." This is the normal division of labor for a public-competition coin: one artist conceives the image, a Mint engraver renders it in relief — the raised and recessed surface that catches light when struck.

When she finally held the finished coin, the feeling was personal. "Touching the coin immediately took me back to my childhood, playing softball, being in the green grass," she said.